The biggest difference I noticed was the approach of the batters. They were all over the place in the box before the pitch. Hitters today tend to be very still. They have their wiggles and timing devices, but for the most part, once the ball is coming, the best hitters waste little motion. They shift their weight, rotate their hips and — wham! — whip the bat through the strike zone.

So it was startling for me to watch Yogi Berra literally walk around in the batter’s box as the pitch was on its way. He’d sometimes take a little stutter-step backwards, away from the plate, with each foot as he loaded up his swing. Almost every hitter practically wound up before getting his bat moving forward.

Those bats were enormous pieces of lumber compared to what players swing today. They had to load up.

Watching these Yankees and Dodgers struggle to get those logs through the strike zone, I wondered why it took so long — until the ’80s and ’90s — for the baseball world to figure out that lighter bats are more effective. Didn’t they have physics teachers back then? Couldn’t somebody have convinced someone like Billy Martin that the bat speed he’d gain with a lighter bat would make up for the mass he’d lose?

Comments

Now I have to go back and rewatch that game. The standardization and science-based approach has made the game somewhat less interesting, I suppose. But it’s also made guys like Tim Lincecum and Craig Counsell inherently interesting. I wonder if it made greater economic sense in the 1950s for players to use heavier bats that wouldn’t break as often.

I read Summer of ‘49 over Christmas break, and in it Dom DiMaggio was talking about how it wasn’t considered manly in that time to eat a candy bar in the middle of the game or anything like that (just like it was also thought that you shouldn’t drink water during the game or else you’d get bloated). You were supposed to finish the game on the same energy you started with. Looking back 40 years later, Dom thought that was just weird.

If they weren’t getting basic nutrition down for concepts of manliness, then there’s no hope with the bats.